Lost Time to Make Up For: Birth of the International Trade Union Confederation

By Jean-Marcel Bouguereau
Le Nouvel Observateur

Thursday 02 November 2006

It's unusual to see prospering organizations scuttle themselves. Yet that is what happened this week. Two of the principal international trade union organizations dissolved themselves. But to create another, more significant, one: the International Trade Union Confederation, which claims 167 million union members, which is to say simultaneously, very many - it's the biggest trade union assembly of all time - and dramatically few. The global rate of unionization remains weak, including in France, which was long a trade union movement bastion. Inasmuch as there are also veritable black holes, like China, where workers' situation today exactly matches Karl Marx's descriptions of the most exploited nineteenth century proletariat. Since the collapse of Communism and these countries' embarkation on a new phase of their industrialization and a sort of catch-up bulimia, capitalism has opened itself to new territories.

But also within the span of a few decades, notably thanks to the development of information and computer technologies, capitalism has undergone a ceaseless and significant mutation, with an increase in out-sourcing toward countries called "developing," where, frequently, the very existence of trade unionism is unknown. "To change the rules of the game for globalization" is the objective the future organization has set for itself, and to push for the integration of a social clause into the rules of international trade, notably through the WTO. With respect to these tactics, trade unionism has lost time to make up for: more flexible non-governmental organizations having taken charge of many battles against the bad treatment inflicted on workers, notably in Southeast Asian and Latin American countries. During that time, the trade unions the most deeply entrenched in developed countries were busier conducting defensive battles against the damage from globalization. Different "alternative world" fora allowed these two worlds - that of traditional trade unionism and that of the NGOs - to begin to get to know one another and to collaborate on themes such as sustainable development that enlarge classic trade unionism's vision.

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Jean-Marcel Bouguereau is editor in chief of the Nouvel Observateur and an editorialist for the République des Pyrenees, for which this article was written.

Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.